Meet the Misfits Working to Elect RFK Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy’s quixotic, conspiracy-fueled bid for the Democratic nomination has ladled out tens of thousands of dollars on a clutch of failed GOP candidates, several high-profile anti-vaxxers, a “homeless” leftist, a Cambridge Analytica vet—and some good old-fashioned nepotism.

With ousted congressman and failed Ohio gubernatorial candidate Dennis Kucinich at the helm, the campaign has brought aboard a crew of oddballs with backgrounds in everything from granola pop spirituality to data harvesting and cryptocurrency, from leftist podcasting to Republican and even Libertarian Party politics.

And, of course, the campaign has also drawn staff from the extended Kennedy family and his accomplices in the anti-vaccine movement.

“I don’t judge people. Apparently you do,” Kucinich told The Daily Beast when questioned about the backgrounds and qualifications of the campaign’s staffers. “This is a campaign of people who love America, who want to save America from this situation that we’re in. If The Daily Beast thinks it’s going to smear them, it’s got another thing coming, I can tell you that.”

Here’s a round-up of the most unexpected—and unsurprising—figures on the receiving end of disbursements from the Kennedy campaign.

Amaryllis Fox Kennedy

Nepotism is a Kennedy family tradition: it’s what landed the candidate’s dad his gig as U.S. attorney general in 1961, and what inspired a subsequent federal law aimed at keeping presidential relatives out of the executive branch. Of course, that regulation doesn’t apply to campaigns, which are free to put family members on the payroll so long as they compensate them at market rate—no more and no less than they’d grant anybody else.

For Kennedy’s daughter-in-law, ex-CIA officer Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, RFK Jr’s operation has placed that rate at $21,263.27 in just the month of June. An article in Time asserted Fox Kennedy, wedded to the contender’s namesake son, has been running the campaign’s digital strategy. Fox did not respond to questions about her credentials for this role, or what kind of competitive interview and vetting process she underwent to obtain it.

Charles Eisenstein

The New Age personality and best-selling author of such titles as Sacred Economics and The Yoga of Eating, known mainly for his lifestyle advice and eco-activism, decided during the pandemic that he was also an expert on public health policy and vaccines, and began dispensing advice and opprobrium on those topics as well.

Other outlets have reported that Eisenstein is working as an adviser to the campaign on messaging. But none yet has reported the price: $44,253.45 paid so far to the woo-woo guru’s company More Beautiful World LLC, despite Eisenstein’s longtime advocacy of a “gift economy.”

Eisenstein also did not answer questions about his qualifications or how he got hired.

Brittany Kaiser

Kennedy doled out $10,000 in June for “digital consulting” from a firm called Achayot Partners, which according to its anonymous one-page website “provides professional speaking and training on privacy, data protection and the use of blockchain technology.”

Materials filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission show Achayot Partners’ CEO and 50 percent owner is Brittany Kaiser, a former director at Cambridge Analytica, the 2016 Trump campaign vendor that harvested data from the social media profiles of millions of Americans. Kaiser has since reinvented herself as a whistleblower and online privacy advocate—the other half of Achayot Partners belongs to her sister Natalie, with whom Kaiser co-founded the nonprofit Own Your Own Data. Brittany has also developed an interest in cryptocurrency, which she’s reportedly used to funnel money to both WikiLeaks and Ukraine. Additionally, she now chairs a Bitcoin mining operation that claims to exclusively utilize green energy.

She also managed the 2020 presidential campaign of Mighty Ducks actor-turned-crypto kingpin Brock Pierce, the only other candidate to have ever hired Achayot Partners, Federal Election Commission records show.

Kaiser did not respond to a request for comment.

Del Bigtree

One of the foremost purveyors of debunked theories linking vaccines to autism, Bigtree isn’t a doctor—but as a producer he has worked with people playing them on TV (and, yes, he actually cites this as a credential). Kennedy so far awarded Bigtree, known for wearing a Star of David to compare public inoculation campaigns to the Holocaust and pushing disinfo about the measles vaccine in the middle of a deadly outbreak, $13,550 for “communications consulting.”

Matt Waters

After pulling a meager 1.8 percent of the vote as the Libertarian Party candidate for Senate in Virginia in 2018, Waters switched to the Republican ticket and downgraded his ambitions to run for state legislature this fall. But he’s still involved in the national scene: Waters’ direct mail outfit F Street Partners has received $5,000 from Kennedy’s ostensibly Democratic bid. The firm has also worked for the right-wing Moms For America Action, an arm of an organization that led a “parents’ strike” to protest COVID-19 measures in schools.

Waters told The Daily Beast “the campaign and I found each other,” though he did not furnish further details about this political meet-cute. He did say he’s no longer “consulting directly” for Kennedy.

“To be clear, I didn’t abandon my convictions,” Waters wrote in answer to questions about his partisan promiscuity. “An increasing number of Americans are rejecting globalism and big pharma mandates (and with it millions of sick and obese kids due to the food industrial complex), government censorship, being told to obediently get their shots and swallow the nightly news repeating the same narratives reinforcing all of the above.”

Robert Lucero

Another unsuccessful Republican aspirant—who failed to even make the ballot in his bid against Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.)—Lucero has identified himself on social media as the Kennedy campaign’s director of fundraising and outreach, and shared photos of himself with the dynast. The campaign filings report the $12,218.70 it’s paid him since May simply as “salary.”

Lucero appears even more politically confused and unusual than Waters. Despite his Republican registration, he runs a political action committee called New Deal PAC, which calls for a revival of the liberal policies of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration. The committee has done little other than pay Lucero himself, though.

What’s more, a solid slice of New Deal PAC’s fundraising has come from the accounts of a different outfit Lucero ran: UtePAC, named for and founded by the American Indian tribe of the same name. In 2022, the FEC alleged that after the Utes hired Lucero, the operative “recklessly failed to fulfill duties imposed by law”—while the tribe accused him of having “used deceptive financial management practices to take UtePAC funding for his personal use.”

Lucero ultimately entered an agreement with the FEC whereby he admitted to having massively underreported the PAC’s receipts and disbursements, even as he continued to blame inadequate staffing for the problem. He also agreed to pay a $3,500 fine, which the commission reduced from $33,000 due to his reported financial hardship.

Lucero did not respond to requests for comment from The Daily Beast. Kucinich noted that the reconciliation agreement officially resolved the matter.

“The FEC rendered its decision. They’ve closed the file, and we’ll respect the decision of the FEC,” he told The Daily Beast. “If the file was still open, I’d be very concerned about that. But it’s not. It’s closed.”

Helen Brady

Brady, who ran unsuccessfully for Massachusetts state auditor in 2018 and for Congress in 2020, is a comparatively normal Republican. An interview with a local paper during the latter ill-starred bid featured screeds against “socialist progressives,” “rioters roaming our streets,” and “bureaucrats closing our schools and shops,” as well as fear that her children couldn’t express their opinions without being “attacked or belittled by a teacher or a peer.”

Brady told The Daily Beast she linked up with Kennedy through the Children’s Health Defense website, and even claimed to have introduced the Hyannis Port princeling to guitar hero and one-time racist Eric Clapton (Clapton’s representatives did not respond to a request to confirm).

Brady said her connections have availed the would-be commander-in-chief in other ways as well.

“I got a call from Bobby himself, asking if I could help him find a suitable place in Boston to announce his presidential bid,” Brady wrote in an email, adding she helped secure a production crew for the event. “While RFK Jr. and I certainly disagree on a number of issues that would otherwise divide us along party lines, we both stand firm on our First Amendment rights, and I know of all the candidates out there, I trust him most to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ Failing to elect a President who stands by this oath will result in the loss of our right to disagree… that’s why this ‘conservative republican’ supports Bobby Kennedy!”

For her services, Kennedy kicked Brady $10,457.65 for “campaign consulting” in May.

Nikolaos Kyriakou

On his Rumble podcast “Homeless Left,” which he co-hosts with Hollywood producer Matt Weinglass, Kyriakou identifies himself as an “independent journalist.” The claim to be a journalist appears based on a smattering of articles Kyriakou has produced over the years for outlets ranging from Truthout to the Huffington Post to North Carolina’s Mountain Xpress. “Independent” seems more tenuous: while heavily promoting RFK on his podcast, Kyriakou has received nearly $12,000 in compensation and reimbursements from the campaign.

Brian Burrowes

Burrowes edited Bigtree’s 2016 film Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, which pushed long-discredited myths linking vaccines to autism. And because everything gets a pointless sequel these days, Burrowes also directed Vaxxed II: The People’s Truth, which starred not just Bigtree again but also Kennedy, who produced the pseudoscientific flick.

Burrowes is cashing in now on the old boss’s presidential campaign, having soaked up $23,000 for “media production” so far.

David Whiteside

Kennedy isn’t just the godfather of contemporary COVID crackpottery: he’s also the literal godfather of Whiteside, scion of a leading Alabama family. Whiteside’s college gig was working for Kennedy at his environmental advocacy group Waterkeeper: according to his LinkedIn, he even served as the elder aristocrat’s assistant. Whiteside founded a spin-off organization focused on the Tennessee Valley, and made a bunch of music and entertainment industry friends who have helped support it. But the grafted apple has never made it all that far from the tree: according to Google Podcasts, Whiteside produces Kennedy’s paranoid podcast “The Defender”.

And now, the godfather’s presidential committee has paid Whiteside’s Sipsey Productions $24,000. Talk about an offer you can’t refuse.

Whiteside did not respond to a request for comment.

John Zogby Strategies

Maybe the most surprising characters to find among this motley assortment are these venerable veteran pollsters, known for the surveys that bear their name. Team Kennedy has paid the Zogby family firm $78,500 so far for “research consulting.” The famed political temperature-taker explained that he reached out to Kennedy personally after discovering the anti-vaccine activist’s popularity among likely voters.

“In December of 2021 I wanted to do my own polling of public figures and whether or not each were seen as heroic or not heroic in a survey of likely voters. In a list of over a dozen figures from all backgrounds, I included Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he appeared to have a growing following during that time,” Jeremy Zogby, part of the second generation in the polling clan, wrote in a message responding to The Daily Beast. “The results were shocking to me. I shared the data with RFK via email.”

Jeremy Zogby said Kennedy hired the company shortly after he’d leaped into the presidential fray.

“Our firm is independent and over the years we’ve serviced a diverse body of clientele, regardless of whether or not we agree with their stances on issues,” he continued.

Editor’s Note: This has been updated to correct that it was Jeremy Zogby, not John Zogby, who reached out to Kennedy.